Perhaps you know, in the drop-down View menu, you can toggle "contraption I/O activity monitors," which show signal flows (and overloads). There is a small penalty to pay in GUI refresh rate, so it's not something you want to necessarily have turned on all the time. HOpe this helps.

this will add a lot to your patch but the sonalksys free G plug in has level meters, fader, pan etc.. is very handy. i patch them in all over the place and it makes it easy to adjust things when it's time to record.. free plug in.. i find it very useful.